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I am struggling with finding anything positive about myself.

TayRus12

Lately, I am having such massive depressive episodes, mainly just with me feeling like a failure or that i keep screwing everything I do up. I've been like this for years, even before i was diagnosed with Asperger's. In school, the kids would always point out that i messed up or that i didn't do something the right way. Then i would see my parents, siblings or friends do things either the right way or perfectly and they would be praised.

It was like this for years, and it's gotten to a point to where I legit can't think of a nice thing to say about myself. Even when someone would try to say a nice to me, I'd just say something like "I did alright." or "It wasn't a big deal." My therapist even told me to write down one thing I like about myself everyday, but I cannot think of 1 thing to write. i can't even say "I love myself." and mean it. I recently accepted a lot of things about myself, like being gay, but I still can't find anything positive to say about myself.

I want to change this mindset, but it feels like it is set in stone. Am I a lost cause?

  • Good morning from America again, TayRus12!

    TayRus12 said:
    I recently accepted a lot of things about myself, like being gay

    Whoa! That’s really huge, though! You gotta realize that’s not a small thing to accept your own sexual/gender identity when you are not straight or cis gender. If anything, your own acceptance is a strength in and of itself.

    So no, if you can make that positive step forward, I absolutely don’t think you are a lost cause.

  • No I don't think you're a lost cause, but you do need to look at your life through a different lens. 

    I grew up being constantly criticised, often for really stupid random things that I had no control of, like living in a bungalow instead of a house, my child self felt these criticisms deeply and looking back on it now I still feel a bit hurt for the child I was and angry that the other kids were so judgemental, but in reality I guess they were doing what all children do and pointing out differences they saw.

    I think the turning point for me was having always been terrible at maths ,constantly failing and being told off for being stupid, was when we had to do some long sum and put how we'd worked out the answer down too. I got marked down even though I had the right answer because I'd ot worked it out "properly". Where there were lots of nines I added them as tens then minussed the extra ones, this was wrong and a lazy way to do it, I was confused and angry then and just gave up. So you can imagine how I felt when I found out that Einstein and Richard Feynman both did calculations like this, if it was good enough for two Nobel Prize winners then why wasn't it good enough for me? These teachers were idiots!

  • Hi and welcome. I'm sorry to hear how you are feeling.

    Autistic people have many positive traits, but maybe you're overlooking them. Here is a link to an article about autistic strengths, hopefully you will recognise some of these:

    https://www.simplypsychology.org/autistic-strengths.html